“Ethan! Help mummy to buy 3 cloves of onions, 2 pears and a bottle of chili sauce from the mini mart downstairs please!”

“Sure, mummy!”

15 minutes later…

“Ethan, where’s the bottle of chili sauce?”

“Oh! I forgot that!”

Does this situation sound familiar? Well, most parents would dismiss such behaviours as “forgetfulness”, nothing serious and nothing to worry about. However, memory is very much related to learning. “Learning is the acquisition of skills and knowledge, while memory is the expression of what you’ve acquired” (Kazdin, 2000). Therefore learning and memory are intertwined and learning is not complete without memory. Imagine being able to learn the materials taught in class but not being able to remember them once you step out of class.

Memory for details is the ability to remember details of information presented visually, aurally or in the form of tangible objects. It is an important skill related to many academic areas.

Reading comprehension requires substantial memory to be able to read, comprehend and remember the details of the passage. Children who are weaker in this skill tend to forget details in the passage and would have to reread over and over to answer the questions.

Children with weak memory skills tend to be careless especially in spelling. For example, the child may misspell “Table” as “Tabel”. Although he/she is able to remember the meaning of the word, he/she is unable to remember how it is spelt exactly (details).

Learning Chinese characters would also require memory for details. Characters may look the same but they differ in meaning just with an extra stroke. For example, 太and 大.

Another academic area related to memory for details would be Science. A great deal of memory work is required for understanding scientific facts (characteristics of elements, characteristics of classes of animals).

Interesting Fact: Research showed that a relaxed, stress-free, distraction-free, fatigue-free state is vital for learning and the formation of memories.

To find out about your child’s Memory for Details ability, REGISTER for our Complimentary Learning Assessment.